Computational Analysis of Turbulent Internal Flow in
Ballistic Solid Rocket Motors

Abdollah Arabshahi, Kidambi Sreenivas, D. Stephen Nichols, Brent J.C. Mitchell,
Lafayette K. Taylor, and David L. Whitfield
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 37403

The present study was undertaken to provide a computational analysis tool in support of modeling and simulation of solid rocket motors by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The need to establish a predictive capability for the detailed three-dimensional turbulent flow within solid rocket motors presented an opportunity to apply two in-house families of structured-grid and unstructured-grid compressible Navier-Stokes flow solvers which have evolved over many years. The solvers utilize a state-of-the-art implicit upwind numerical scheme to solve the time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations in either a Cartesian (unstructured) or a generalized time-dependent curvilinear coordinate system (structured). Computational results have been obtained for two experimental cold-flow cases during the course of this work. These cases serve as baselines for comparison to demonstrate the capability of the flow solvers to simulate solid rocket motor flows. The present flow solvers give promising results for flow field predictions in regimes ranging from low subsonic to supersonic within the rocket motor system.